I have also found such training to take place in weapons training - even when the weapons are wood. Wood weapons traveling at full or near to full speed, where poor technique, be it for mental/emotional and/or physical reasons, warrants that one will be struck and struck hard often amounts to the same kind of training; I would also like to suggest that ukemi from intense applications of technique - where all Angles of Cancellations are present and especially where Kuzushi is created by Nage and not contrived by Uke - can also amount to such training and/or conditioning. In our dojo, this is one of the first places where one begins to tackle such issues.

I can agree with what David says here. I tend to use both a padded bokken and normal bokken in training. The padded one is for the beginners who are still working on basics of tai sabaki etc. The normal one I use with my more senoir folks to keep them on edge and aware that danger is present a bit.

The main way we do it though is in our tanto randori training where one really tries to plunge the knife into you from multiple angles sometimes and also resists and tries to counter your techniques if you don;t catch em with a clean technique. I am hoping to expand on this practice further. I must admit that this sort of training may have helped me when I had my first experience being robbed at gunpoint. In some sort of weird way I was able to keep calm although the adrenaline was pumping and the system was being heightened.

I think this sort of training is important for any h2h combat system or martial art that plans to train at some level for dealing with attacks "out there on the pointy edge of things." Like other things in training we only learn how to control and use the effects of psychological and chemical stress responses by understanding and playing with them a bit to see how we work under stress. Of course the absence of this has been the main point of attack for those who want to discount Aikido as an effective foundation SD art.

As we saw in the Pizza Parlor Attack video - serious, targeted and malicious violence can shock many of us into a place we are not accustomed to or try to deny exists. As such, when we get there, we are in a foreign place, but our guide is the person trying to beat our brains in.

Sadly this sort of training needs to be also more prevalent among those who do experience this sort of stuff or are threatened by it regularly. LEOs, Prison Guards etc. should have some solid experience in this training for their own protection, not to mention civilians. The results of a lack of training in this regard for a Prison Guard can be seen in the video on this thread.

It's a side of reality that we sometimes try to deny, but when it shows up it would be nice to be ready, at least imho.
LC